Grubby oil in the D3 gearbox......

[Nomad9]

Hi Forumites,
I was going to continue this thread where it originally started, but seeing as the outcome has lead me down a different path I thought I would start a new one.
The original thread was about a judder in a D3 6 spd auto box, after reading the thread some of my minor symptoms ligned up with what I was reading in the thread. I decided to check the oil condition, found it to be rather grubby. From there the adventure started............
Knowing the gearbox is sealed for life has always made me feel a bit uneasy being in the business I'm in, expecting an oil to last for the life of the vehicle is in my opinion unrealistic, over time oil will degrade, there is a filter in the gearbox, who expects never to change a filter for the life of their vehicle? Not me.
Reading different threads an oil change around the 90 to 120 k mark seems to be the go, my 2005 D3 has just clocked over 92k hence the reason for the check.
I've now bought a steel sump with a replaceable filter from A & B transmissions and I thank Bill for the excellent service, delivery hints and tips. Removing the sump pan with what I regard as standard tooling proved a challenge I got an allen key style set of torx spanners from the local Coventrys. Having these made getting at the torx heads at the back and front of the pan a lot easier.
Drained all the oil out, what a shock, really grubby and dirty, didn't smell burnt just well used. I've now got a sample I'm going to get analysed and compare this to a sample of new ZF Lightguard oil I'm going to replace the old oil with. Thanks to Sniegy pointing me in the right direction here, the cost was frightening but so is the price of a repair to the gearbox using the wrong oil.
A couple of sharp pulls and pushes in a back and front direction snapped off the old filter inlet tube, as advised by others, easier when you know what to expect. I didn't fancy releasing the engine mounting and jacking the engine up the 35 mm as advised in "the book", seemed to be a few things a bit closer than 35 mm when you look around the engine bay.
So this evening I've now left a drain pan under the gearbox to catch the occasional drip until I return to the task tomorrow night. From there I'll clean the gasket face up and put a light smear of Hylomar on the gasket to complete the job.
Then a refil, get the gearbox up to around 40 degrees C and check the oil level, all sounds to easy.
Had I not been a part of this forum and had I not taken the advice offered I would have been driving over to the Eastern states at Xmas maybe doing untold damage to the gearbox. I still struggle to understand the sealed for life concept, sealed for the life of what, the oil, the vehicle, the gearbox, the person driving?
I hope my lesson learnt here encourages others to check the condition of their gearbox oil and not rely on the "sealed for life" statement to carry them through to hundreds of thousands of faultless kilometres of driving.....

[CSBrisie]

Great post Nomad9. I get my D3 serviced at Sovereign Autos in Adelaide (where one of the owners owns a 2009 run out D3) and they recommend exactly what you have done at 100,000Km's. This is based on rebuilding gearboxes in l322 Range Rovers at the 160k km mark - so much for "sealed for life" as you say! They confirm this is LR speak for ' owners wont keep their cars longer than 8 years or so".....interesting though process

[CaverD3]

"Sealed for life of the factory warranty."

A&B is the ZF sump for the Falcon. You can get it from ZF along with the oil.

[Nomad9]

Hi CaverD3,
Ah Ha, thanks for that. So if you purchase the extended warranty do Land Rover change the oil for the extended period after the normal warranty period, or do they just let the warranty run it's course and hope the gearbox and oil lasts?

[Neil P]

... if you purchase the extended warranty do Land Rover change the oil for the extended period after the normal warranty period..?

No they don't , but if it breaks they'll probably wear all the cost.
In fact it's risky to change the oil except at a Dealer ( with LR ZF )
or they'll play hardball on faults . This is an enigma.

[Nomad9]

Hi Neil,
After the warranty period has expired, would it matter who changed the oil? I can't imagine that if LR would acknowledge any faults as their fault after the warranty period anyway would they? I had a Nissan Patrol 3.0 ltr a few years ago and maybe you know or you don't know they had a habit of melting the no 3 piston, it was due to a well documented lubrication issue. Due to the amount of failures they had they took the hit on replacing the engine during the warranty period, as long as the vehicle was servived by them of course. Then after the warranty period if you wanted to pursue a claim for an engine this had to be done though the courts, to recover the full cost. In some cases Nissan supplied a short motor and you were charged the labour, all the parts outside the short motor and any fluids. A new full engine for these was around the $20k mark, in some cases when they blew up more than the value of the vehicle.
My D3 is now outside the warranty period so for me his is a muted discussion, for me it's just an interesting topic, having the definition of what "sealed for life meant" cleared a lot of things up, up until that point the statement was quite ambiguous.
As part of the last service before the end of the warranty period I suspect that LR don't replace the g/box oil. At the dealership I visit every now and again the service guy seemed quite proud that he had D3's out there with 250+ klms on the clock without a gearbox oil change, this sounds like luck more than anything else. The service guy at the time was questioning why on earth I thought I needed to changed the oil. Being a machinery engineer and recognising the importance of good quality clean lubrication, I couldn't understand how he expected an oil to last 250k klms without being changed, the gearbox has a filter in it for heavens sake. If the gearbox was sealed for life, which maybe his perception on life was the life of the vehicle, why does it have a filter, gearboxes have wearing components which contaminate oil which block filters, FACT.

Neil please don't take this as "having a go", I was talking to a guy last night over a couple of wet ones, he drives a Fairlane (his choice), he has the six speed ZF box and yes he was of the belief that the gearbox was sealed for life, life being the life of the vehicle, so I suppose it's just how the sales people put the "sealed for life" statement across when selling the vehicle winds me up a bit.

[Neil P]

... After the warranty period has expired, would it matter who changed the oil ? .....

Absolutely not . It's interesting how many products have an
extended warranty for original owner only. At least we don't have that
with cars , eventhough the 3 to 5 years is the distributor's discretion .
Has the 30 days minimum warranty ever been repealed ?

[Nomad9]

Hi Forumites,
So as a close out to this job, I've now fitted the steel gearbox sump supplied by A&B Transmisions, great stuff, fitted a treat. The bolts at the front of the new sump pan were a challenge to screw in a cup of tea or depending on the time of day a beer might be a good idea, awkward little things.....
I then toped the oil up, 4 litres in first started the engine and continued to top up, put a further five litres in until the oil started to drip out of the level plug, worked the gears for about five seconds in each position and checked the level again, all good.
Only got the oil to 25 degrees C so I'll have to get this a bit warmer and check the level again, I was tempted to put my foot on the brakes and give the throttle a bit of a work out but resisted, never a good way to heat everything up quickly, could have significant impact if things went wrong.
I got the oil analysis reports back this morning, one for the new oil which as you would expect all very low in all sections, being:- Wear metals, Contaminants and additives and physical tests. I was going to attach these to the post but thought better of it. The old oil from the gearbox came back with higher than normal wear metal levels of copper and aluminium, 251 and 32 parts per million respectively.
When I was getting the plastic protector plate ready to go back on underneath I noticed that the hole under the cat convertor was blocked and there was quite a lot of dirt that was "resting" around the cat convertor. Also last year I did a few beach runs, nothing in the water, close to the edge but not in it, I found an extraordinary amount of seaweed in and around the front of the protector plate, some sea weed was actually singed around the exhaust pipe area. Something I'll be keeping my eye on in future.
So by these results the 90 to 120 k number for changing the gearbox oil seems to be on the money, I suspect this would vary depending on the type of driving the vehicle is used for, school trips would be a lot easier than towing a three tonne caravan around Australia.
One thing that did surprise me was the viscocity, the new oil I put in was a 28 weight oil and the old oil that came out was a 31 weight oil, I though the oil would have been a lighter weight oil.
OK, so that's a sort of close out on this little episode I hope the information proves usefull to you.

[CaverD3]

So nomad looks like the oil viscosity increases with use. This would mean putting a higher viscosity oil eg SIN ATF may increase further in viscosity with use?

[Nomad9]

Hi Caverd3,
As oil gets older the viscocity does increase slighly, as the oil picks up contamination due to wearing parts and heat, the stuff left behind after the filter has cleaned out the big lumps (figuratively speaking) will be the thickening agent, oil only gets thinner when it's gets diluted by something such as water, diesel, petrol or heats up due to being in use. Synthetic oils tend have a more stable viscocity range, so because the synthetic stays more viscous when heated you may have to use a lighter weight oil to compensate for this. The gearbox will be designed to work with a certain grade of oil at a certain temp range which by rights should be a certain viscocity. When you change the oil say from a mineral to a synthetic both the viscocity and the working temp of the oil change, the gearbox may not be built to handle this change, that's when the problems start.......... Again hope this is of interest to someone.